Overseas Study as Zone of Suspension: Chinese Students Re-negotiating Youth, Gender, and Intimacy

ABSTRACT

This article draws on longitudinal ethnographic research with a group of Chinese women students in Australia to consider how time studying abroad functions as a temporal and geographic ‘zone of suspension’ for these mobile youth, through which they reconfigure the meanings of both youth and feminine gender. Vis-à-vis life course, on one hand this generation of young women is subject to the fairly rigid normative life-stage model of the elder generations, which is more compressed for women than for men and leaves women little leeway for deviation between stages; while on the other hand they are drawn toward a more open understanding of life course, incorporating an extended period of ‘emerging adulthood,’ pre-marital sexual exploration, and a greater diversity of possible life pathways. Since the normative life-stage model’s opportunity-cost is greater for women than for men, there is more pressure on women – especially academically, professionally and personally ambitious ones – to elaborate alternatives. Based on formal, recorded interviews as well as participant-observation over a number of years, this article explores how for some, educational mobility seems like a step toward this goal; however, in practice the contradictions of both femininity and life course are reconfigured, rather than resolved, in overseas study’s ‘zone of suspension.’

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• Chinese students
• mobility
• emerging adulthood
• self-fashioning
• sexuality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Fran Martin is Reader in Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. She is currently completing a five-year ethnographic study of Chinese university students’ social and subjective experiences of studying in Australia, with a focus on the gendered aspects of their educational ventures. Prior to her current work on international student mobility, her best known research has focused transnational Chinese youth and media cultures. She has published widely on television, film, literature, Internet culture and other forms of cultural production in the contemporary transnational Chinese cultural sphere, with a specialization in representations and cultures of gender and sexuality. Her recent books include Telemodernities: Television and Transforming Lives in Asia (with Tania Lewis and Wanning Sun Duke U.P., 2016), and Lifestyle Media in Asia: Consumption, Aspiration and Identity (co-edited with Tania Lewis, Routledge, 2016).

Notes

1 All respondent names are pseudonyms; some details have been altered to protect anonymity. Quotes from respondents have been translated from Mandarin by the author unless notes indicate otherwise.

2 For a discussion of a related form of ‘diasporic’ sex-gender subjectivity among rural-to-urban migrant women workers in China, see Gaetano 2008.

3 For a detailed discussion of the complexities of defining China’ s ‘middle classes,’ see Goodman (2014: 92–121).

4 I refer here to the intermediate stratum of the middle classes; the thinking of the elite and super-wealthy is arguably attended by fewer (or at least different) anxieties. The framing of youth as a time of pin is common among my respondents, but more pronounced among those from intermediate-middle rather than super-wealthy class backgrounds. For a detailed discussion of the complexities of defining the middle classes in China today, see Goodman 2014.

5 It is possible that the gendered life course model observed is specific to the middle and elite classes; however, since the socio-economic prerequisites for extended overseas study preclude inclusion of significant numbers of lower-class women in this study, robust cross-class comparison is not possible. Anecdotal discussion by participants of lower-class and rural acquaintances and relatives, however, accords with extant research to suggest that the ideal feminine marriage age in those contexts is lower than among middle class urban families (Zhang 2000).

6 This discussion was conducted in English.

7 This discussion was conducted in English.

8 Jankowiak and Moore’s lack of reflexivity on gender inequality vis-à-vis youth sexual cultures is surprising, since elsewhere in the same article they make a direct critique of gender inequality in the employment market (2012: 286–287). Although Farrer also proposes the pertinence of the emerging adulthood concept to China’s urban youth (2014b), elsewhere he is far more attendant to the ongoing limitations imposed by gender norms (for example Farrer 2002: 223–257); Farrer also underlines that he does not propose that the new youth sexual culture should be seen as exemplary of sexual liberation or youth rebellion (2002: 19).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Australian Research Council [grant number FT140100222].